Monday, August 26, 2013

No Future Questions

Summer camp sounds like a lot of fun to me.  Swimming, hiking, boating....all those fun things.  But then there are those things I wouldn't want to do.  Rock climbing, repelling, wrestling....I'm a little girly.  What can I say?

My middle son, Aaron, was a counselor at a Christian sport camp this summer and had a little life lesson for me when he came home.  It seems that many of the kids were constantly looking out for the next activity. All day long, they'd ask, "What's next?" or "What's the lineup for the day?"  I suppose it gets tiresome when 12 kids ask that question over and over and OVER so the counselors had a standard response.  NO FUTURE QUESTIONS.  All day long when the kids asked, they'd respond "No Future Questions....None."  Every time the future was brought up, it was shut down.  Dunzo.

He explained the reasoning.  Sometimes the kids weren't liking the activities they were doing.  Maybe it was hard, maybe it was boring, maybe they weren't good at it.  The counselors were trying to get them to focus on the here and now and do what they were trying with excellence, even if it meant a lot of attempts and a lot of hard work and perhaps very little success....and quite possibly some tears.

Am I a control freak?  I didn't think so until after Aaron shared his summer with me.  I'm all the time wanting to know what's coming next.  I don't like it when things feel out of my control.  I want to be done with this in order to get to that.  Hurry up difficult thing so we can get to the more pleasant thing.  I want to be done with the tears and get on with the laughs.  Are you like that?

Matthew 6:34 says, "Don't worry about tomorrow.  Tomorrow will worry about itself."  From the master Counselor himself, we get the word to let go.  Let ME take care of that for you.  You don't have to know because I have it all planned.  Unclench your hands, open them up, and let go of that need to know.  My dear child, No Future Questions.